Word: hfpa
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...resumés of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are a little more obscure. Few make a full-time living as movie critics for their international publications; most are showbiz reporters, celebrity hawks, gossip paragraphists. Legend had it that in the Association's early days, some HFPA members were only vagrantly attached to news organs, and that once a year they'd get to host a party for the movie stars whose hair they'd dressed or cars they'd parked. Whatever the journalistic provenance of the HFPA members, their ability to commandeer a Sunday night on a major television...
...HFPA could. The Globers pulled a Prop. 8 on Milk, ignoring it for best picture and supporting actor; only Penn was cited. The Globes list did include all the actors the critics groups honored, except for DeWitt. As for the more specialized prizes of Best Documentary, First Feature and Cinematography, the Foreign Pressers couldn't be bothered. That's just part of what separates them from the other critics confabs...
...also clear that the tastes of the HFPA are those of official Hollywood. The films they nominated this year reflect the taste of the movie elite and their publicists. These are the pictures the industry wants to be remembered by. Until now, you hadn't seen Kate Winslet's name in this story, because she didn't win any of the critics' awards. (Though some magazine reviewer named her Best Actress of 2008.) Well, she snagged a Globe nomination for Actress - Drama in Revolutionary Road and Supporting Actress in her other December drama, The Reader; both were among the five...
...fact, the scent of weed was redolent among Globe finalists. Robert Downey, Jr., who might have been named for his starring role in Iron Man - except that the HFPA, like the other critics groups, has an unwritten rule outlawing blockbuster action pictures - found a place in Supporting Actor, as the doped-out, blackfaced Method actor in Tropic Thunder (also from the Apatow factory). He was joined in that category by another Thunder actor, Tom Cruise. He does a splendidly sulfurous comic turn as a movie studio exec; but, as the Globe committee hardly needs to be reminded, he's also...
...while the major studios hope for a boost, there are other observers who - glitz and glamour of the Globes aside - question the veracity of the HFPA. Numerous entertainment writers have challenged the group's diversity, its members' qualifications as journalists, and their attentiveness in screening every major contender. There's also the charge that the group votes based on star caliber, and not film quality - celebrating the A-list more than encouraging the B-list. The journalists may be foreign, but the agenda seems strictly Hollywood...